here. >> having a place like this where things are controlled, it's a godsend. >> so godeski will be back every day he can. today ray like back at 2014. >> i was not a ham. i am ham and cheese serve odds a platter. i was ridiculous. in the last year, you have heard from icons pool is a makers and people creating national debates debates. the war on drugs has done more than anything we can think of. those at the frontlines for the battle of marriage equality.

>> and it was the pop began at that filled with lies and misrepresentations of on pure our community. before prop 8 pass. and the people shaping our popular culture. >> who will be the king and determine the poll says. we start the shows with thoughts from a renowned musician. >> i was watching you deliver a ted talk. you talked about an incidents when you were a child and you really you enjoyed trees and bushes and foliage but then you were taken there against your will. >> yeah, i was bullied by a group of kids. i don't know, i can't remember how old i was, probably seven, eight, something like this. and they took all of my clothes off and mucked around and i was -- these were people that i thought were my friends. so it was shocking on a number of ways, you know, it wasn't too bad of a school. it was a school i went to later which was worse. but it was still a dramatic events for me.

when i try sit with people who have been tortured or watch their loved ones blow up, you know, i don't have anything in my experience, really to compare to that. but i have got just, you know, a little hint of something when the world isn't what you pictures it and it's not going for you. >> and it was a combination of the world not what you expected it to be, and some shame and some sense that people won't maybe believe it. >> yeah. i guess. and i think that was one of the things that astounded me with human rights world when i first encountered it. was that it was for people would horrible experiences to deny, burr and i forgotten. those got away with an enormous amount and it seems there was a fantastic opportunity with new

technology coming, particularly cameras, of getting evidence and making sure some justice was achieved. you were on twitter talking about philip se seymour hoffmans death and your perspective of drug laws and his death. >> all i said is if he were alive today would he go jail or rehab. and i said end the war of drugs, the war a strugz has dunmore to detroit the fabric of the black community than anything we can think of . not the effects of jim craw or slavely. it's the war on drugs taking innocent deceased people, locking them up and dumped them back in the hood with no hope. that became jail culture for the hood. not for the school. not for the prison, prison has it, you learn, you are educated in how to do things that you never would have done just by

white and blacks don't they use and sell drugs at the same rate. you can't have the rock fella drug laws, when we were ending those laws, 94% of the people were black and brain incarcerated under the rockefeller drug laws in a state that was not 94% black and brown, we incarcerate more people than anybody in the world you know, that america. responsibilities i believe for locking its own up. and creating criminals and the cycle of criminal natural in our communities because of this process. michael sam, number 52. just came out of the closet right before the draft and it sort of started a little firestorm i think it's fair to say. you have been very focal in game rights. tell me why, and then tell me a bills about what you think about this young guy? >> people are suffering. people are -- people need to wake up consciousness in, and it's always the same thing, right? you have a voice, sergeis should get the rights that we all are -- the rights that we want for ourselves and the rights

that we could give to others. the respect that we demands for ourselves, we should give to others. that's a simple mantra, i try to live by. so i want to be able to get married again . not now. [ laughter ] >> let's hear what news you are making for me. go ahead. >> i want to get married again, people should have the right to get married. was there a moment or a series of moments where you realized that you were not just disappointed pimas a lot of people were in california after prop 8. but ready to join the fight, ready to put the bit in our teeth and actually take this to court . >> proposition eight hurt, it hurt before it passed. the propaganda took a shift and the shift was to utilize this

idea that children would be harmed. that the institution of marriage would be harmed. that heterosexual couples would no longer get married if you were to allow marriage equality. and it was the propaganda that was filled with lies and misrepresentations of our community, who we are, what our love represents that really lit the fire to us before prop eight passed. because we thought this cannot happen in california. but we saw the tactics of it. we saw the attack ads against us. and our community and then prop 8 passes and it was really devastating. and we -- we just stood up. we literally just at one point stood up and said this is enough. we can't go door to door and lobby our neighbors for our rights any longer. we wants knock on the door and say please read the contusion because it applies to me as well. we had to stand up and say the law is black and white. we are going to lean on the law. the abuse in the early years was really striking.

abuse from your family, abuse from some of the nuns in the convents that you were sent too fast a toddler, you remember three years old. did it feel sometimes like everyone that was supposed to be taking care of you was hurting you? >> no. there were certain people that were supposed to be taking care of me that were hurting me. but as a child, i just -- everything was very clear to me. it was confusing at first who is my mother, who is my aunt, why am i here? who are these people with the funny scarfs on their heads? >> the nuns. >> the nuns. you know, but once i started to assess the situation, you know, i was like, okay, so there weren't all -- it wasn't a place where everyone that works there, all the none nuns, all the priests, all the counselors were bad and abusive. there were a hounds. of them. but there were some really great wonderful people.

so i didn't view life like that. plus i still had my aunt in my life and my cuts ends in my life who i thought were my sisters who a call in the book my sus inning cousin sister. i think those three years with my aunt helped me understand that there is good love out there. and i was loved. and i was told i was special. >> and those times with your aunt are the real bright spots in the story of your childhood. >> yes. >> but then there are the times with sister renata. and there was one day where she slams your head repeatedly against a locker. and you call her evil incarnate. >> yes. >> in the book. was she just a prototypical strict nun at a convents or was she really as sadistic as she seems to be? >> i think she was a little bit more sadistic than

the standard strict nun. she went overboard. >> was there one particular incidents besides the locker incidents that stood out to you that would exceptbly identify what i exceptbly identifywhat it was lt convents. >> one time me and the girl i call crazy cindy we were in trouble so we had to clean the entire bathroom at six years old. what i mean the entire bathroom, it's a bathroom in a home no children . there were six sinks and three bathroom stalls and three to four shower stalls and then the entire floor so we were there for a good part of the day. and cindy had gotten the cough seasyrup. we found cough syrup and back then it was mostly alcohol and we gotten tipsy and turned on the radio in the bathroom that we weren't supposed to turn on and we were doing -- i was diana ross she was the supremes then i was david ruffin and she was the

december takes and then i was -- i was the pips and they took gladys knight. and by that time sister renata comes no and starts screaming and yelling at us and tells us to hold out our hands and we did and she proceed today whack them. and then told us to turn them over and whack them again. and to the point where it was cracking and there was blood and the stinging and it was so hard. and terrible the pain. and then she had the goal to say, now go -- goll to say go back and finish cleaning and i said with what, our feet. and it was crack. she just smacked me across the face and backhanded and it was and it was three or four slappings, so it was adding insult to injury. and then we had to go and clean the bathroom. and the girl, crazy cindy, started cursing. and sister renata thought it was

me, so i had bloody hands, they are stinging, i am trying to not touch the soap because it's burning. and she takes the soap out of my hands and sticks it in to my mouth. tells me i have a potty mouth. >> and you were six? >> i was six. and but was -- part of my personality is i couldn't stop laughing because while she's shoving it in my mouth, i am is noting and there is bubbles coming out of my nose so i couldn't stop laughing so like you know, and i told this woman -- i drove this woman crazy. i drove her craze. >> i everybody at six you always had a comeback? >> right there. i was always. the timing was em impeccable. >> and you were always a ham? >> no, i was not a ham, i was ham and cheese sur served on a platter. i was ridiculous. you are watching "talk to al jazerra." still ahead on the program she's famous for her trail blazing work with chimpanzees, jane goodall talks about her passion that started decades ago.

>> when i was a tiny little girl i wanted to go and study animals in africa because i fell in on love with tarzan and sill iman married the wrong jane.

i am stephanie sy and irrelevant watching a special edition of "talk to al jazerra" featuring the best of the interviews last year. environmental loyal robert f. kennedy, jr. and celebrated conductor. but first a woman well known for her work with chimpanzees. >> what's the most interesting thing that oven learned about chimpanzees over the years? >> how like us they are, or how like them we are. and i think the most shocking, but very fascinating thing is when i realized that like us, they have a dark side. and that made them sadly seem more like us than i had thought before. but they are capable of violence, brutality and, a kind

of primitive war. >> can you take me back to the beginning. you were secretary an those pollses lewis eek i leaky, thats where your got your start right? >> that's where it started. >> how did that happen? >> when i was a tiny little girl i wanted to study animals in africa because i fell in love with tarzan, and sill iman fell in lover with the wrong jane and i was jealous with her, but i decided i want to go to africa and write books about them and everybody laughed except my amazing mother who said if you want something you have to work hard and take advantage of opportunity and you'll get there in the end. so i got invited by school friend, saved up my money, working as a waitress, got out to african. heard about lewis, went to see him at the museum, i wasn't asking for a job, but he took me around anded and me hundreds of questions and because i had got on learning about africa and

animals and spent hours in the natural history knew see numb london, i could answer many of his questions. and he just offered me a job as his secretary. you are very passionate about the environment. where does this passion come from? when it did it start? >> i always knew i would be an environmental advocate from when i was very young. in fact, when i was eight years olds i wrote a letter to my uncle, president kennedy who was then in the white house asking him to talk to him about pollution issues. and i always saw pollution as theft. and i always thought, you know, why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us. or destroy a river or a waterway. which is supposed to belong to the whole community. the issues are all i want duaned with democracy. >> reporter: it's still a lock for an eight-year-old to sort of grasp.

first of all what did your you werayouunclerespond. >> i wrote that because there were streets on k street that were bell wering this very thick smoke when we went to church on sunday it would blacken our shirts. and then a stream that i played in when i was a little boy was called him run a tributary the potomac got buried by developers the animals the cray fish and mud puppies and an owls nest up there and it was all destroyed. so i wrote him a letter and said i wanted to write a book about pollution. he invited me to the white house. and i had a meeting with him in the oval office and i had pictures of myself in my shorty shorts. >> and you were eight years old. >> i was eight and i brought him a solomon der that i caught the night before but it had been killed by chlorine in the without their i brought him. so we spent a lot

of that meeting talking about the salamander and he said it didn't look well and i said no, he was just sleeping and afterwards we released him in the rose garden fountains. i said i want today do a book on pollution and he arranged for me to meet with second the interior one of the great environmentalists in our nation's history and also rachel carson she launched the modern environmental movement in our country. israeli is also a special i suppose sensitivity because many holocaust survivors recoil at the idea of playing volunteering never whicwagner whichwas a fav. you tried with good intention to his get the israeli fil philharmonic to play it, it didn't work out. will you try again? >> we will. but we have to have patience, i hope it happens in my lifetime.

i hope. but there are still quite a few people with tattooed numbers on their arms. they are revered saints in israel. we have to respect them. and it's not that they hate the music of wagner, but music transports them back to the time of terror and we want to avoid that. >> is there one moment in your career that stands out as being the most awe struck with something that is in front of you or something that you witnessed? >> well, i am a musician as i said. it's the music that makes me awe struck. it's the interpretation of some of my colleagues. but if you talk about an occasion, this orchestra has had many occasions which go down in their history as being very vitally significant. first time we played in berlin after the war. 1971. and germans were really with

tears in their eyes, especially at the end of the concert when we played the israeli anthem. >> and what was that like for you and for members of the orchestra? >> well, i was, i am neither jewish nor israeli nor german. i was proud and honored to be part of this. daniel was our soloist in that concert and it was location that nobody will forget. another occasion was in 1982, we went across the border in to lebanon in those days there was this war between the southern lebanese army and the north and fatah, et cetera, and the israelis had erected a good fence with doctors were treating wounded lebanese. they are doing it that now with syrians also, israeli doctors are helping out on the boarder and we went across the board

never to southern lebanon in to a tobacco field with the help of the israeli border police, we erected a stage and a sun shade for the okay that and played a concert with only southern lebanese came to this concerts . and after the concert we rushed to the stage they climbed on the stage and they were hugging the musicians, this is the lebanon and israel i would like to see today. unfortunately, then in 1983, came the israeli invasion of lebanon for which the southern lebanese were very grateful in the beginning. i think the israelis stayed too long. and the same southern lebanese turned to be the first suicide bombers. if you can imagine. this is how history turns. after 9/11 did david recommend anything and you to do a recover?

>> when francois and i got back from ground zero with our daughter in toe. >> you lived around ground zero. >> i lived 10 blocks north. and my daughter had started going to school right in the eye of the storm . we saw the plane go in to the building and went running downtown and managed to extricate our doubter and started walking up the highway just as another tower fell . so as soon as we were back in any kind of phone contact there was a message for francois saying get up here, we are putting out a special issue. at that point i didn't know what to do. after we get settled i began to figure out what a cover might be. somewhere between francois' and me we conjured up that black on black cover in the course of five or six days. the cover was black on black cover that looked pretty much just blank until you saw it in in a certain light then you

could see the phantom limb of the ghost of the towers that had fallen, the only clue is the pierced part of the lowering will he in the new yorker. that was the cover. >> what doesn't to say with that? >> was there anything that you were trying to say. >> in a moment where most any imagery would be too much, it seemed like pulling back toward minute alism was a good idea. to say what needed to be said which was what i just described as the phantom limb. like i go from my house to my studio which was two blocks further north i heap to keep turning around to make sure the towers were still not there. they seemed like they would still be there. it's not like i had a lot of affection of for them as architecture, i don't especially love my nose but i don't want anybody poeing their fist in to it. so there was that . the only thing that could be said was the not understanding

the way reality was now reconfigured. always implicit in this thing that would flash in to certain lights being manifest. otherwise it was just a total blackness, so that seemed appropriate to the spirit and mood of what was happening in new york in the week following september 11th. stay with us, next on the show, george r.r. martin who wrote "game of throwns." >> why couldn't i have been five kingdoms, five kingdoms would have been a lot.

>> hundreds of days in detention. >> al jazeera rejects all the charges and demands immediate release. >> thousands calling for their freedom. >> it's a clear violation of their human rights. >> we have strongly urged the government to release those journalists. >> journalism is not a crime.

>> the holes are closing in tunisia. voters cast ballots in a historic post-revolution election. hello. i am marianne. you are watching al jazeera. cop fronting ice ill. kurdish forces in sinja. volatile oil markets with prices sinking, we look at what it means for the